Pacific Policy Problems of New Administration

The Concern felt by the new administration over conditions which confront the free world in the Far East, previously dramatized by Gen. Eisenhower's post election trip to the Korean battlefront, is given further emphasis by the plan of Secretary of State Dulles to make a fact-finding visit to India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries in the late spring. Dulles will seek, among other things, to determine the extent to which independent governments of Asia may now be ready to cooperate in a general plan for defense against Communist aggression in their part of the world.

Dulles made it clear in his first address as Secretary of State, Jan. 27, that administration thinking on Far Eastern policy extends far beyond the immediately pressing problem of Korea. Gen. Eisenhower himself had said, on his return from Korea last Dec. 14, that “in all our thinking and planning” the Korean war must be considered “but the most dramatic and painful phase, for us at the moment, of our world-wide struggle against Communist aggression.”

Of the immediate situation in Korea, and in Indo-China where large-scale fighting is also in progress, Secretary Dulles said the Communists believed continuation of hostilities was working to their advantage. “I believe,” he added, “that Gen. Eisenhower will find the ways to make the enemy change his mind in that respect so that they, too, will want peace.”